


Visiting the Oracle

by meanwhiletimely



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 21:17:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7730080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanwhiletimely/pseuds/meanwhiletimely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Time blurs within the walls of Azkaban, in this cold stone world without sunlight or starlight or spell light, where boundaries between the past and the future dissolve into oblivion.</i>
</p><p>Delphi has three visitors in Azkaban.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visiting the Oracle

**Author's Note:**

> The phrases in italics are maxims of the Oracle of Delphi.

**I. The Savior  
** _Act without repenting._   **  
**

The Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement escorts the girl known as the Augurey into Azkaban himself.

She’s unconscious at the time, of course — levitated bound into the prison by half a dozen Aurors. Her silver eyes are closed, but silver hair flares out around her, seeming to coil through the air of its own accord. At the rear of the procession, Harry Potter aims his wand squarely at her throat.

She is locked inside a windowless glass cell deep within the lowest level of the fortress — in permanent view of her guards, but isolated far from fellow prisoners. Harry leads the Aurors in drawing up containment charms and anti-magical wards around the cell, then performs a series of potent restraining spells on the still-unconscious prisoner. When she wakes, she will never do magic again.

And when she does — when those Black-grey eyes flash open, when she jolts awake in warded chains — Harry is waiting. Alert and alone.

He watches her take in her surroundings — attempt to shatter the glass, attempt to rise into the air, attempt to incinerate him with lightning fire from bound hands — and then finally sink to the floor in defeat, meeting his gaze with a look so full of hatred he can almost feel it in his scar.

He wills his voice calm and steady. It obeys. “Welcome to Azkaban.”

“I’ve had no trial,” comes the snarling reply, vaguely distorted through charmed glass. “Even my mother had a trial.”

“Your mother,” says Harry, ignoring the loud, barking laugh reverberating around his skull, “was imprisoned by a different Head of Magical Law Enforcement.”

“But she didn’t stay imprisoned, did she?” Delphi is watching him closely — penetrating and unnerving. Too late, he remembers that Legilimency cannot be constrained by warded walls, and throws up mental walls of Occlumency instead: fast, but not fast enough. Delphi gives a slow, sharp smile. “Neither did Uncle Sirius.”

Harry clenches and unclenches the fist that bears his other scars. “Bad news, Delphi — you’re not an Animagus, and your father won’t be freeing you. You’ll live out the rest of your life in this cell.”

She tilts her head just slightly to the side — a gesture so familiar it sends sharp chills through his spine. “You're still afraid of me. Aren't you?”

With a short, humorless laugh, Harry turns to go. “Goodbye, Delphi. Be glad the Dementors are gone.”

He’s halfway down the corridor when he hears her calling after him.

“ _One last chance… Try for some remorse_.” She’s speaking in Parseltongue, sending each sibilant syllable coiling directly through that lightning scar. Harry stops, but does not turn around. “ _Isn’t that what you said?_ ” 

He turns, answering Parseltongue with Parseltongue. “ _I know what I said._ ”

“ _Yet you refuse to grant me the chance at redemption that you granted him._ ” She’s speaking quickly — almost desperately — but there are undercurrents of menace beneath her hissing supplication. “ _You entomb his daughter in Azkaban at the age of twenty-three years old — still with a fully intact soul — after offering the Dark Lord_   _one last chance._ ”

The savior of the wizarding world studies her a long moment before speaking — green eyes blank; expression unreadable.

“That was twenty-three years ago. I no longer give second chances.”

Harry Potter climbs stone stairs and disappears.

Later, left alone, Delphi searches for remorse. She finds none. She finds only rage  _—_ rage, and raging anguish.

Remorse, if she could feel it, might hurt somewhat less.

* * *

**II. The Survivor  
** _Restrain your tongue._   **  
**

Days pass — days, or weeks. Time blurs within the walls of Azkaban, in this cold stone world without sunlight or starlight or spell light, where boundaries between the past and the future dissolve into oblivion. She screams, sometimes, screams until she’s hoarse, but deep within the solitary bowels of Azkaban, screams are swallowed up by silence — silence broken at last by the quick, firm click of heels on stone.

Another Potter, though not at all the Potter expected. Not Harry. Not Albus. Ginevra.

Facing away toward the wall, Delphi listens to her stop before the cell — listens to her curtly dismiss the guards escorting her — listens to their steps fading down the torchlit corridor — listens to Ginevra Potter’s pounding heart. A sharp intake of air, and then she speaks.

“Hello, Delphi.”

“What do you want, Ginevra?”

“Don’t call me that,” she snaps, a dangerous edge to her voice. Puzzled, Delphi turns to meet her gaze: a black-haired boy is flitting across her thoughts, trailing pale fingers across her skin, calling her  _Ginevra —_ and he is not Harry Potter. His dark eyes flash full red.

Delphi’s breath catches in her throat.

“You knew my father.” It makes no sense. She attempts to penetrate her mind again, seeking answers — seeking another glimpse of him — but Ginevra’s ready for her this time: Occlumency blocks her. Delphi steadies herself against the walls of her cell, suddenly dizzy. “How?”

“That’s not important,” Ginevra Potter says. Her voice is steely now, as level as she can make it, but she’s trembling. “What’s important is ensuring  _you_  will never —  _ever_ — hurt my son again.”

A Horcrux — one of his Horcruxes. It’s the only way. The Dark Lord left a part of himself inside Harry Potter. Did he also leave a part of himself inside Harry Potter’s wife? In Parseltongue — watching carefully for any sign of understanding — Delphi hisses, “ _Do you speak it?_ ”

Ginevra’s features only harden. “You think you can scare me with Parseltongue?” She lets out a derisive laugh. “Parseltongue stopped scaring me a long, long time ago.”

She opens her mind, this time, intentionally — hurling memories at Delphi like battle spells.

_A girl with flame-colored hair, writing in a worn black diary — blood underneath her nails, ink seeping into her skin. A girl who will never fully remember, a girl who will never fully be scrubbed clean. A girl possessed, a girl controlled, a girl who spoke to an enormous serpent in a voice that was not her own._

“You know,” that girl grown is saying, “I always thought the size of that snake had to mean he was  _vastly_ overcompensating, if you know what I mean—”

“ _Silencio._ ” Delphi spits out the Silencing Charm so vehemently it hurts her own throat with its strength, but the prison wards are stronger. Ginevra Potter keeps talking.

“—but it seems that never bothered Bellatrix any more than his lack of a nose.” She takes in her captive audience’s helpless fury with barely restrained relish. “What’s wrong, Delphi? Didn’t you want to know your father?” She leans closer with a hard, bitter smile. “I knew him better than most.”

“You—”

But Ginevra is already reaching for her wand, and  _her_  Silencing Charm hits strong — Delphi falls silent, grasping at her throat. Ginevra’s gaze is harder than ever. “He used to do that to me all the time — take my voice away. Make it so I couldn’t speak — couldn’t cry out for help — couldn’t cry at all. And you know what, Delphi?” She leans closer, almost touching the glass. “I don’t cry anymore. Not ever.”

Ginevra Potter replaces her wand and steps back, away from the glass. Her brown eyes are shining, somehow, lit up like gold. “That Silencing Charm will wear off eventually, but some things won’t. Things like what your father did to me… or what you did to my son." 

 _I am not my father_ , Delphi says silently, locking eyes with the girl he failed to destroy and wondering, as she says it, whether it's true. Whether she means it. Whether that matters.  _I'm just a girl he meant to use as a tool — another girl for him to turn into a weapon. Like my mother._ _Like you._

She makes no hint of hearing, no reply. It is not until Delphi is alone again, after the departing click of her heels has faded back into the silence of the stones, that it registers at last why Ginevra's eyes were shining.

They were filled with unshed tears.

* * *

**III. The Sister  
** _Beget children from noble ancestry._

Alone in her transparent cage, Delphi dreams, and dreams.

She dreams of her father, young and whole. Opening a Chamber. Beckoning her inside. 

She dreams of another world, a Dark world with no restraints at all — where she rises and reigns, where she sees and summons storms. 

She dreams of three Black princesses — one dark, one light, one fair — running through a garden, calling after each other, laughing:  _Cissy. Andy. Bella._

And at first, when she hears the voices, she is sure she is dreaming once again.

"I will see her," says the first decisive, forceful voice — resounding from the stairs, echoing through the stones.

"Not without Potter's permission," comes the reply.

A chime of harsh, ringing laughter — coming closer, down the stairs. " _Potter_ is godfather to my grandson. If _Potter_ wishes to keep her from me, you can tell him to come here and try."

Two figures, at the end of the corridor. A stately, regal woman, sweeping forward. A pleading Auror guard, hurrying after.

“Madam Tonks — this is highly irregular—”

“ _Mrs._  Tonks will do, and yes, ‘highly irregular’ is precisely what I would call this situation.”

"Mrs. Tonks, the Department sympathizes—"

The woman starts to reply, then staggers to a stop — staring speechless at the prisoner before her.

Delphi knows that aristocratic face at once — she's seen a sharper, crueler version in the history books. She's seen a younger version in the mirror.

The last Black sister. Andromeda Tonks.

"A quarter of an hour," she says quietly, wrenching her gaze away from Delphi with effort and rounding on the Auror. "That is all I ask."  

He considers her — pitying, perturbed. Pity, in the end, wins out. "A quarter of an hour, Mrs. Tonks."

She nods sharply in agreement, and does not look away from him until he has returned to his position at the stairs. Then — only then — does Delphi's aunt turn back to fully study her: identically Black-grey eyes roving breathlessly over blank features. When she finds her voice again, it’s faint. “You look just like her.”

The corners of Delphi's lips curve into a smile. “So do you.”

Andromeda’s mirror-gaze narrows. “That wasn’t her — that smile. That was  _him_.”

“Oh?” Delphi arches a brow. “Did  _you_  meet my father, Andy?”

The color drains out of her already-pale face so fast it might never have been there at all. “What did you just say?”

“Auntie,” she says innocently — enunciating, clear and cold. “Isn’t that what you are? My aunt? My family?”

“Your mother  _killed_  my family,” hisses Andromeda, familiar face contorted in sudden rage. “My husband — my  _daughter_ —”

“Is that why you’re here?” Delphi steps forward, voice light and sharp and deadly. “To have your revenge? To kill  _her_ daughter, too?” Andromeda says nothing — she’s gone very still. “Do it,” Delphi whispers, pressing close against the glass, dragging her eyes downward to the sheathed wand in Andromeda’s robes. “Kill me, since no one else will.”

For a single, trembling second, Andromeda’s shaking hand creeps toward the wand. Delphi closes her eyes, imagining it. The blinding flash of green. The spell to stop her heart. It could all be over, all of it — the past, the present, the future. All her aunt has to do is speak the words.

“No.”

Delphi's eyes snap open.

“No,” says Andromeda again, more vehement, as she sinks to the stone floor against the wall.

A staggering rush of feeling floods her body: disappointment, or relief, Delphi can't be entirely sure. "Why, then? Why are you here?" She finds herself sitting, too — inches away from her aunt, with only glass between them — and feels very, very cold. 

"I had to see you," she says softly, as if from far away — her head in her hands. "I had to see you for myself." But when Andromeda looks back up at her, it's Delphi who can see the person truly on her thoughts: asmiling, blue-haired boy.

_Andromeda holding him as an infant. Andromeda calling him Teddy. Andromeda telling him of his parents, of being orphaned by his own aunt. Andromeda raising him in Grimmauld Place — a gift from Harry Potter, after he won the war._

( _Oh, how generous,_  thinks Delphi, the taste of something acrid on her tongue.)

Breaking eye contact at last, she says, "I think we've both seen enough."

Andromeda doesn't seem to hear her. “You know, it’s funny — you’re not on the tapestry.” Another glimpse of the old Black house: its woven family tree. Noble and Most Ancient.  _Toujours Pur._ “Neither am I, of course, anymore.  _Legitimate_ Black offspring only. I’m disowned, while you—” She gives a mirthless half-laugh. “Well,  _you_ are Bella’s illegitimate child with a half-blood, aren’t you? Merlin. The irony.”

She still calls her  _Bella_ , notes Delphi, thinking inexplicably of Teddy's bright blue hair. "If you had known, would you have taken me in?" she hears herself ask suddenly. "Like Teddy?"

Andromeda gapes, astonished _._ Delphi might as well have hexed her. "I don't know." She's blinking rapidly, as if to clear her head. "I... I really don't know."

 _You do know,_ Delphi thinks.  _Y_ _ou know perfectly well that you wouldn't have._ But Andromeda is no Legilimens — her stunned expression doesn't change. 

"Who  _did_  take you in?" she's asking, sounding somehow in pain. "Who did she leave you with, for all those years?"

Delphi thinks of yellow Rowle hair, and of transparent cages. "Someone she thought could be trusted."

Andromeda makes a noise that might be a snort, or a scoff. “She always hated the idea of having children. Though I suppose it’s no surprise that for  _him_  she would make an exception.” Her aunt isn’t looking at her, now, but at the far stone wall — whatever memories she’s thinking of, they’re not for Delphi to see. “There was nothing,” she says, half to herself, “ _nothing_ she wouldn’t do for him.” 

“Except kill you. Her blood-traitor sister.”

Andromeda’s widened eyes snap back to stare at Delphi for a long, unsteady moment. When she speaks again, her voice is very low. “If he had asked that of her, I would be dead.”

“Maybe. Maybe he never asked because it was the one command he knew she couldn't obey.” Andromeda’s lips curve open, then press together tightly. Delphi shrugs. “Or maybe he just didn’t care. Either way — here you are. Still living.”

Andromeda stares a moment longer, then slowly shakes her head. “And here  _you_ are. Still living. The last rotten branches of the Black family tree.” She lets out another laugh, and her laugh feels familiar, almost — almost like Delphi’s own. “I knew it had to be true — even before I saw you. She named you after a star.”

"Mrs. Tonks?"

The Auror guard is at the stairs again, wand drawn at the ready. Time is up.

Andromeda jolts as if out of a reverie, then stands, brushing off her robes. "You," she says to Delphi, glancing down to where she still sits, very still, "are not what I expected." 

Delphi considers this, green light dancing across her eyelids; almost answers,  _Neither are you —_  but Andromeda has already turned away, back toward the staircase. Back to daylight, and to Teddy. Back to her empty, ancestral home of unseen ghosts.

"Delphini—" Andromeda glances back with an odd, unsure expression, brows drawn together in consternation. She hesitates, then speaks. "If I visited again, would you mind?"

Delphi's heart constricts strangely in her chest. "No," she answers faintly. "No, I wouldn't mind."

One final nod, one furtive final look, and Andromeda Tonks sweeps up and away, leaving a gust of cold air behind her. 

She might have been a dream. 


End file.
